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External 3.5" floppy drive

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  External 3.5" floppy drive Mark Wiggin <mark.wiggin@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2012-03-27 16:23 +0100
    Re: External 3.5" floppy drive Martin Wynn <m.wynn@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2012-03-27 16:57 +0100
    Re: External 3.5" floppy drive jgharston <jgh@arcade.demon.co.uk> - 2012-03-27 09:46 -0700
      Re: External 3.5" floppy drive Mark Wiggin <mark.wiggin@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2012-03-27 20:10 +0100
    Re: External 3.5" floppy drive Rick Murray <heyrickmail-usenet@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-03-27 20:10 +0200
    Re: External 3.5" floppy drive cferris@freeRemoveuk.com.invalid - 2012-03-27 21:13 +0100
      Re: External 3.5" floppy drive Stuart <Spambin@argonet.co.uk> - 2012-03-27 21:32 +0000
      Re: External 3.5" floppy drive Mark Wiggin <mark.wiggin@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2012-03-28 10:56 +0100
        Re: External 3.5" floppy drive Grahame Parish <spamtrap@millers-way.net> - 2012-03-28 12:02 +0100
          Re: External 3.5" floppy drive Rick Murray <heyrickmail-usenet@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-03-28 14:04 +0200
            Re: External 3.5" floppy drive Jess <phantasm_39@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-28 14:56 +0100
              Re: External 3.5" floppy drive Theo Markettos <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2012-03-28 22:50 +0100
                Re: External 3.5" floppy drive Folderol <folderol@ukfsn.org> - 2012-03-28 23:19 +0100
                  Re: External 3.5" floppy drive Rick Murray <heyrickmail-usenet@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-03-29 02:32 +0200
                    Re: External 3.5" floppy drive Jess <phantasm_39@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-29 22:41 +0100
                Re: External 3.5" floppy drive Rick Murray <heyrickmail-usenet@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-03-29 02:24 +0200
                  Re: External 3.5" floppy drive Theo Markettos <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2012-03-29 01:31 +0100

#4618 — External 3.5" floppy drive

As my PC no longer has a floppy drive, I bought a USB external floppy 
drive.  However, I can't get Virtual Acorn to recognise it.

Any ideas?

-- 
Mark Wiggin

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#4619

> As my PC no longer has a floppy drive, I bought a USB external floppy
> drive.  However, I can't get Virtual Acorn to recognise it.
> 
> Any ideas?

Hi Mark,

Do you have "Drive POP"? hint :-)

Regards,
Martin.


-- 
Martin Wynn, Newport, Shropshire.
A. HTML.
Q. What are the two most annoying things about emails?

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#4620

Mark Wiggin wrote:
> As my PC no longer has a floppy drive, I bought a USB external floppy
> drive.  However, I can't get Virtual Acorn to recognise it.

USB external floppies have their firmware stipped down to only
be capable of accessing disks formatted to 18 sectors of 512
bytes. You won't be able to access ADFS disks with it, only
DOS disks.

Virtual Acorn should be able to see it as a HostFS mount point.
Go to Options -> HostFS and create a mount point, name something
like FloppyA and path A:\

JGH

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#4623

In message <bc982ecf-b21f-48b4-88d7-e46f6f4425a1@w1g2000vbx.googlegrou 
ps.com>
          jgharston <jgh@arcade.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Mark Wiggin wrote:
>> As my PC no longer has a floppy drive, I bought a USB external floppy
>> drive.  However, I can't get Virtual Acorn to recognise it.

> USB external floppies have their firmware stipped down to only
> be capable of accessing disks formatted to 18 sectors of 512
> bytes. You won't be able to access ADFS disks with it, only
> DOS disks.

Unfortunately, that was what I wanted to do.  Annoyingly, I used to 
have a built-in floppy drive which I had to remove when I had an SSD 
fitted.  Looks like I may have to dig out my old RISC PC from the 
attic...

> JGH


-- 
Mark Wiggin

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#4622

On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:23:35 +0100, Mark Wiggin 
<mark.wiggin@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

> As my PC no longer has a floppy drive, I bought a USB external 
floppy 
> drive.  However, I can't get Virtual Acorn to recognise it.

Give up.

When you insert the floppy, you might notice that it preloads some 
data, and that the drive LED flickers like a harddisc, not like a 
floppy ought to. I suspect (but can't confirm) that the USB floppy 
behaves like a tiny mass storage device. However, unlike a generic 
flash memory, the floppy drive understands the disc format. The 
upside, it is a simple and easy way to connect a disc drive (I 
plugged mine into my PC and it loaded the driver and was ready in 
seconds. The downside? You're pretty much stuck for anything that is 
not a DOS style (512 byte sector) floppy, as you can't get low-level 
to control the FDC. It's rather like trying to do anything unusual 
with a USB parallel port... you just can't.

Sorry.

Your best bet, if you have a real RISC OS machine, is to take disc 
images of floppies. ;-)


Best wishes,

Rick.

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#4624

In message <b524137752.Mark@blueyonder.co.uk>
          Mark Wiggin <mark.wiggin@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

> As my PC no longer has a floppy drive, I bought a USB external floppy 
> drive.  However, I can't get Virtual Acorn to recognise it.
> 
KryoFlux - USB Floppy Controller
http://www.kryoflux.com/

-- 
Colin Ferris Cornwall UK

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#4625

In article <43aa2d7752.cferris@cferris.freeuk.com>,
   <cferris@freeRemoveuk.com.invalid> wrote:
> > 
> KryoFlux - USB Floppy Controller
> http://www.kryoflux.com/

Fascinating.

-- 
Stuart Winsor

Only plain text for emails
http://www.asciiribbon.org

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#4626

In message <43aa2d7752.cferris@cferris.freeuk.com>
          cferris@freeRemoveuk.com.invalid wrote:

> In message <b524137752.Mark@blueyonder.co.uk>
>           Mark Wiggin <mark.wiggin@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

>> As my PC no longer has a floppy drive, I bought a USB external floppy
>> drive.  However, I can't get Virtual Acorn to recognise it.
>> 
> KryoFlux - USB Floppy Controller
> http://www.kryoflux.com/

That looks very useful - but for occasional use only, rather 
expensive...


-- 
Mark Wiggin

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#4627

In message <aa04797752.Mark@blueyonder.co.uk>
          Mark Wiggin <mark.wiggin@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

> In message <43aa2d7752.cferris@cferris.freeuk.com>
>           cferris@freeRemoveuk.com.invalid wrote:

>> In message <b524137752.Mark@blueyonder.co.uk>
>>           Mark Wiggin <mark.wiggin@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

>>> As my PC no longer has a floppy drive, I bought a USB external floppy
>>> drive.  However, I can't get Virtual Acorn to recognise it.
>>> 
>> KryoFlux - USB Floppy Controller
>> http://www.kryoflux.com/

> That looks very useful - but for occasional use only, rather
> expensive...

It also looks like it is for a PC or Mac to be able to read older 
floppy formats and save them as image files, rather than a generic USB 
floppy interface to be used on any computer allowing to directly 
access its own disc formats.  Sounds very interesting though if you 
need to extract and archive old discs.

-- 
Grahame Parish
maillistDOTparishATmillersHYPHENwayDOTnet
Aylesbury, Bucks. HP19 (UK)

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#4628

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:02:19 +0100, Grahame Parish 
<spamtrap@millers-way.net> wrote:

> rather than a generic USB floppy interface to be used on any
> computer allowing to directly

I wonder if anybody has had any success in hacking a USB floppy 
controller to understand other types of discs?

I think the chances of this depend upon whether it understands *only* 
DOS format floppies, or whether it understands only 512 byte sectored 
DOS-like floppies (which would include Linux (etc) boot discs).

It seems, with 1024 byte sectors, we're in something of a minority.

However, didn't some versions of Windows (95? 98?) have an option to 
format to around 1.8Mb by discarding a lot of "nonessential" stuff? I 
wonder if a generic USB floppy drive can read those?


Best wishes,

Rick.

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#4630

In message <almarsoft.4389838432528447246@news.orange.fr>
          Rick Murray <heyrickmail-usenet@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> However, didn't some versions of Windows (95? 98?) have an option to
> format to around 1.8Mb by discarding a lot of "nonessential" stuff? I
> wonder if a generic USB floppy drive can read those?

At first I thought you were talking about FDFormat, but then I 
remembered what you were referring to. I found this:

http://www.winimage.com/wimushlp/wini1a1y.htm

So we aren't in such a minority, but I guess you can't install Win 98 
from a USB floppy system then.

-- 
Jess                   Iyonix

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#4634

Jess <phantasm_39@hotmail.com> wrote:
> In message <almarsoft.4389838432528447246@news.orange.fr>
>           Rick Murray <heyrickmail-usenet@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> > However, didn't some versions of Windows (95? 98?) have an option to
> > format to around 1.8Mb by discarding a lot of "nonessential" stuff? I
> > wonder if a generic USB floppy drive can read those?
> 
> At first I thought you were talking about FDFormat, but then I 
> remembered what you were referring to. I found this:
> 
> http://www.winimage.com/wimushlp/wini1a1y.htm
> 
> So we aren't in such a minority, but I guess you can't install Win 98 
> from a USB floppy system then.
> 

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#4636

On 28 Mar 2012 22:50:16 +0100 (BST)
Theo Markettos <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

> Jess <phantasm_39@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > In message <almarsoft.4389838432528447246@news.orange.fr>
> >           Rick Murray <heyrickmail-usenet@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > 
> > > However, didn't some versions of Windows (95? 98?) have an option to
> > > format to around 1.8Mb by discarding a lot of "nonessential" stuff? I
> > > wonder if a generic USB floppy drive can read those?
> > 
> > At first I thought you were talking about FDFormat, but then I 
> > remembered what you were referring to. I found this:
> > 
> > http://www.winimage.com/wimushlp/wini1a1y.htm
> > 
> > So we aren't in such a minority, but I guess you can't install Win 98 
> > from a USB floppy system then.

Good grief! What a mess.
I knew Microsoft were bad for moving goalposts, but I didn't realise they were
*that* bad... and that's just for a floppy disk format!

-- 
Will J G

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#4640

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 23:19:39 +0100, Folderol <folderol@ukfsn.org> 
wrote:

> Good grief! What a mess.

Indeed. I wasn't aware it was 1024 byte sectored (or 2048), but I 
recall that Windows 95 was supplied on something like 50 of them, and 
I had to get a CD as my box couldn't reliably read them, though !PC 
could, however as my co-pro at the time was a 386 it wasn't going to 
get far with W95...

I notice the format appears to have been quietly dropped; although it 
wasn't really ever announced much in the first place. I only 
discovered it myself when these supposedly DOS format discs were 
rejected by DOSFS.


Best wishes,

Rick.

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#4667

In message <almarsoft.144304454297214065@news.orange.fr>
          Rick Murray <heyrickmail-usenet@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> however as my co-pro at the time was a 386 it wasn't going to
> get far with W95...

I installed Wind 95 on a 386 SX once. However, it took a long time, 
(at least it seemed long then.)

Not having at least 5M and preferably 8 was the killer though.

-- 
Jess                   Iyonix

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#4638

On 28 Mar 2012 22:50:16 +0100 (BST), Theo Markettos 
<theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote...

...nothing!?

Is it my end or yours?


Best wishes,

Rick

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#4639

Rick Murray <heyrickmail-usenet@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On 28 Mar 2012 22:50:16 +0100 (BST), Theo Markettos 
> <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote...
> 
> ...nothing!?
> 
> Is it my end or yours?

Hmm, think that was my end.

What I meant to say was that USB floppy drives are similar to, but not the
same as, mass storage devices.  They're actually quite flexible with lots of
parameters (sectors per track, etc).  So that should cope with Windows 98
DFM format no problem.  But DOS and such drives start their sector numbering
from one.  RISC OS starts its sector numbering from zero.  Which means that
sector 0 of any track is inaccessible.  Since the sector numbers are written
onto the disc in a preamble before the sector data itself, you can't trick
the drive into providing you with that data.

If you reprogrammed the firmware to offset everything by one sector, the
drive wouldn't be able to read DOS discs (because sector 0 doesn't exist on
a DOS disc).

Here's the spec if you want the gory details:
http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs/usbmass-ufi10.pdf

Theo

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